MAKING LIKE A CROSS between Mondo 2000 and Condé Nast Traveler, Business Week recently offered its readers a peek at the business trip of the near future. The CFO of the twentyfirst century, the magazine testified, will be a cyberpunk in all but name, required to don a pair of VR goggles and “‘fly’ over a 3-D landscape representing the risk, return, and liquidity of a company’s assets.” And damn if the accompanying computer graphic of one such landscape—a pastel mesh of aquamarine blue and salmon—didn’t make that glowing moor of financial data look as inviting as a sunlit beach in the Seychelles.

The longing I felt gazing at that digital vista is no surprise; if the hype is right, VR is bound to offer us not only unforeseeable stockholder satisfactions but also beauty and pleasure, which means the way we hear and create music, too, will surely change—and one could argue that dub, the